On Twenty-First Avenue in Brooklyn, between 62th and 63rd Street, is a two-story building with a brown awning, with white lettering on the awning saying Brooklyn Psychiatric Services, P.C.. My office sits between a family practitioner and a blood and drug-testing lab. The office door is always locked; every one who comes in has to ring the doorbell. All day long, the doorbell is ringing. When I get home, I can still hear the doorbell ringing in my ears. It is even worse on a busy day like Tuesday. Once you open the door, you walk in a hallway, which is just big enough for a patient with a wheelchair to come in. It is like a cube that leads you to another door, and then you enter a waiting area with yellowish like mustard colored walls. The color is supposed to remind patients of sunshine. That will help them to relax and calm down. One wall has a giant window from floor to ceiling. Vertical blinds, off white or dirty, I can never tell, cover the window. In the waiting area, sixteen simple but comfortable metal-framed chairs are spread along the walls. By the window are halfway dead palm trees, one in each corner. By the receptionist desk is an old, dusty, outdated tube television hanging high up in the corner. Three Chagall paintings decorate the waiting area: “Music (Green Violinist)”, “I and the Village’” and “Paris through the Window”. The paintings seem nice but, if you take a closer look they are very strange. In “Paris through the Window”, a cat with a human face sits on a windowsill next to a person with two faces, as if the artist is trying to show someone’s split personality. One face is blue, the other yellow, looking very creepy and in the background, you can see the Eiffel Tower. Also people are floating in the air sideways like ghosts. As for the painting “Music”, you can look at it for hours. The violinist has a green face, his hands are different colors, and he is a giant standing on the roofs of the houses. Once again, people are floating sideways in the background. They always remind me that I work with patients that have mental problems.

On Tuesday, the first wave starts at 9am in the morning. The doctor who comes at that time is never happy. It is either too many patients or not enough patients for her. Then, there are times when she makes them wait too long. Sometimes patients start complaining and get mad. It is very hard to keep everyone happy; especially it is true for patients in the mental health field. When patients come in to the office and see more than two people sitting in the waiting area, they start asking questions. Is the doctor here? “How long is the wait?”, “How many people are in front of me?”, “Will the doctor see me on time?” I have to answer all their questions all the time; otherwise, they get mad and start complaining even more. On top of that, the phone never stops ringing. Sometimes, I surprise myself by realizing how much I can tolerate.

At noon, I have the second wave with a new doctor. He is always late, however the patients that attend him love him so much that they never mind waiting for him. He is also the owner of the practice, and my boss. He has a great personality and, if you need any help, he will always go out of his way to help you. Most of his patients are elderly and Russian. When they sit and wait for him, they do not stop talking. Their conversations are almost on anything that comes to mind. Most of them cannot stop talking about Ukraine and what is happening there. They start discussing which side is right and which side is wrong. The conversations get heated because, it becomes clear that either someone talking is from Ukraine or they know someone who is. Then, they split into two groups: two groups on the side of Russia or the side of the Ukraine, and it ends with the big debate. They talk about it so passionately that they start arguing and get mad at each other. Then, they calm down, and stop talking to each other because they expressed their feelings so emotionally. You can practically write a book on all the stories you hear from them. The majority of them are very sweet and kind, and they always try to bring me candies and chocolate bars, which I have always opposed. Since I have worked there for the past nine years, each patient knows me by name. If it happens that they came and I was not in the office, they get very concerned if I am okay. Some people I know have two grandparents from their mother’s side and father’s side. However, since I have never met my grandparents, I feel like I have a hundreds of them now.

In the evening, at five o’clock, I get wave number three. The child and adolescent psychiatrists comes in for two and a half hours. That is when all hell breaks loose. At this time, the office gets crowded and hectic. Apparently, there is a shortage of child and adolescent psychiatrist in New York because I have also patients who come from Staten Island and even from Long Island. Some of them make a two hour commute to come to us. I see kids with autism, behavioral problems, and many other mental problems. One child is talking to himself nonstop, the other one is running, and jumping, the third one is moving back and forth with nonstop humming. As I am doing my job at the same time, my heart is breaking and crumbling from what is happening in the office. One eight-year-old girl who comes in to the office with her father. She suffers from autism and she cannot speak, however, her father understands her by the moaning and growling sounds that she makes. There are times when the patients are in a very critical stage. At any minute, they can do an unpredictable thing.

On Tuesday at about 8:30pm, when everyone leaves, I finish the paper work and clean up my work place. I turn off the light in the office and walk out. The first thing I do when I walk out of the door is I take the biggest deep breath of fresh air as I can. Only after that, I lock the door of the office from the outside. When I get home and see my seven-year-old son, I give him the biggest kiss and a hug he can get.